Samsung Galaxy Memo could be the new Galaxy Note Mini

Samsung has been in the habit of shrinking and enlarging its smartphones lately. The company's 6.3-inch Galaxy Mega looks like an enlarged Galaxy S4 and the recently announced 4.3-inch Galaxy S4 Mini has been designed to be a more compact version of its flagship smartphone. And now, we're seeing Samsung shrinking its Galaxy Note phablet to create the upcoming Galaxy Memo.

Galaxy Note opened up a new category of devices, dubbed phablets, in the smartphone industry, at a time when consumers were just getting used to 4-inch smartphones. Samsung was looking to blur the lines between a smartphone and tablet with its larger display and it also included a feature that would prove to be a hit with consumers - the S-Pen.

Samsung didn't just throw in a plastic stylus as a gimmick; the Galaxy Note series is based around the S-Pen's technology. It can be used in many different apps and enables advanced functions like taking screenshots, handwriting recognition, and drawing/writing in a natural way, and more. It does much more than the plastic styluses that were used in PDAs and smartphones back in the day. The S-Pen is currently comes with the company's Galaxy Note series of devices, and a new report now claims it will make its way to a new device called the Galaxy Memo.

SamMobile received information and images that suggest that Samsung is planning to expand the Galaxy Note family. The new device will reportedly be called the Galaxy Memo and it appears to be a shrunken down version of the Galaxy Note. According to the site's sources, the smartphone will be a Galaxy Note-based device with mid-range/high-end specs. It will feature a 4.5-inch Full HD TFT LCD display, a 1.4GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel camera, and run Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with Samsung's TouchWiz Nature UX interface.

We'll have to file this in the rumor category for now, but the photos look legit and Samsung is known to cover its bases by releasing smartphones with varying display sizes to appeal to different tastes and preferences of customers. In other words, if the Galaxy Note was too big for you, the Galaxy Memo might be just right for you.